It's all about the designers, and if you guys really want to make a statement, it's going to have to be with buyers. Frankly, istock probably doesn't care if a few people delete their portfolios or stop uploading. If they are going to feel any impact from this, it'll have to come from buyers. If you're a designer and purchase stock images, look elsewhere from now on. If you know people who buy from istock, let them know what's going on and that they could actually save money AND support artists by taking their business elsewhere.

This is very smart Mike. I have been looking into getting a site built and had been trying to decide which agency to link the images to. Had been considering Istock just this morning. I will be choosing another site that pays a decent % instead.

Also, my current business cards have the link to my IS portfolio. I will be changing that and ordering new cards ASAP.

Maybe not much, but if everyone with their own site or blog did the same thing it could have some impact. And what about the industry bloggers? Hopefully they will be vocal about these changes to warn buyers.

Someone else said it, but it bares repeating... MANY iStock exclusives are going to drop their exclusive status and flood other sites with images that use to only be available on iStock. I think Buyers will notice this, especially since prices are lower on most other sites.

Many Istock EX exclusives will find that many other places will not accept wast of their images due to different standards. There is Shutterstock with almost 12 million images. Dreamstime don't accept much of similars. Fotolia has specific taste. 123RF rejects by default daily sum of images. It will be very interesting to see where will go that EX exclusives as well how will they succeed on other places... Not to mention StockFresh and Crestock ;-)

[ADDED] I wonder is this again idea of some fat-ass from Getty? If it is, then soon no more Istock.

One has to try to understand the strategy here. So let's see. The only way the vast majority of contributors will make the same or more despite their royalty rate going down is if they raise the prices by more than that cut. Maybe that's coming.

What I see here though, in the now, and this is purely my musing, is an effort to get the large customers slowly used to the idea of paying more for more elaborate and expensive artwork, in other words getting them accustomed to buying from Getty directly or from their other macro collections. Of course lost Getty customers who saved by buying from IS will slowly be brought back to macro at the same time. The success of Vetta and the implementation of the agency proves that this is working.

At the same time, they are trying to convince their best selling photographers and exclusive farms to contribute to macro, while discouraging the rest from submitting, even to micro. They've got the numbers and it probably won't hurt them that much to have the small guys rant and leave IS, even if that small guys turns out to be most exclusives and non exclusives below diamond. In any case, by force of habit, most contributors will take the bullet and keep submitting... to preserve their lifestyle. It's all just a news cycle anyways, and people will stop their turmoil in a couple of weeks and settle back into their routines.

...Getty slowly wants to move out of the micro business, and hurt it good on the move, taking away big names and big customers with it. Perhaps they didn't buy Istock to help it flourish? Perhaps they bought it to recuperate what they could and then slowly choke it to death... hoping to do it in a way that would prove how micro is inferior to all serious, sensible art buyers in the world. Perhaps in their view it would be great if eventually they all blushed in shame after someone recognized that they used some cheap stuff from micro in their prestigious publication...

After all, let's not forget that the brand that Getty is trying to polish and grow here is... Getty.

I read the IS thread for about an hour, but realized that it was literally growing faster than I could read it. So I came over here for the skinny.

At first I thought that LostOne was right. (Just wait for a few days for their old and verified tactics. They will offer something that is just slightly less awful than this and people will start saying "Thanks istock".)

But now I think nicmac has spoken the truth.

Maybe Getty saw that subscription is the future of microstock (and, someday, real micropayments) and took a shot at subscriptions with StockXpert/PP, and missed.

Anyway, Getty probably never wanted to compete on price only (and that is how commodities must be sold, and microstock images are a commodity), that's not how Getty sees itself. So now Getty is taking its losses and repositioning itself in the image market. As nicmac says, in its new position, Getty will want to destroy microstock, i.e. us.

Anyway, what we are probably witnessing is infanticide, Getty is intentionally, if slowly, killing IS. And we independent microstockers are probably next, if Getty has its way.

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vonkara

« Reply #102 on: September 07, 2010, 17:55 »

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For me it's basically a drop from 40% as a silver exclusive to 25% or 30% with luck at the end of this year.

I might cancel my exclusivity soon and go back with Shutterstock and Dreamstime. It will take myself around 3 hours to resubmit at SS and 20 minutes to reactivate all my files at Dreamstime... sigh

We need some stability, it's incredible.... They threat us like puppets

You need to take into consideration that the Jan 2011 pay structure is going to be set from the 2010 earnings.....just remember how slow it's been this year....not a good beginning to the 2011 pay structure for many of us.

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lisafx

« Reply #105 on: September 07, 2010, 18:04 »

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I would be willing to be there will be ANOTHER price rise in the new year, to coincide with this raping of contributors they will rape buyers too.

Then they can present that to contributors as a way to recover the lost money from the lowered royalties.

Which will lead to a further exodus of buyers, therefore requiring more cuts to contributors to make up for that, etc., etc., etc. until there is not even anyone left to dance on the ashes of what used to be istock.

It's all about the designers, and if you guys really want to make a statement, it's going to have to be with buyers. Frankly, istock probably doesn't care if a few people delete their portfolios or stop uploading. If they are going to feel any impact from this, it'll have to come from buyers. If you're a designer and purchase stock images, look elsewhere from now on. If you know people who buy from istock, let them know what's going on and that they could actually save money AND support artists by taking their business elsewhere.

Hope more buyers will read and agree on this, there has got to be a limit to how greedy you can get without consequences.

lisafx

MANY iStock exclusives are going to drop their exclusive status and flood other sites with images that use to only be available on iStock.

That was the first thing that crossed my mind. Imagine Sjlocke flooding SS and DT. Istock was such a great place to keep them locked up while we regulars had some nice sales at SS.

Amen! This is one thing that could really dilute sales for everyone even further - if the really great istock exclusives begin flooding in to the other sites.

Remember that August was given as the deadline for us independents that wanted to go exclusive and still keep our canister levels? Those of us who signed contracts to go exclusive in August once our DT commitments ran out? Weren't there a fair number of people who actually followed through? Now only one week into Sept. and this comes about. Wonder if it was in the works all along when they were trying to get everyone squared away by August?

I don't know what insults me more, the veiled attempt to hide what is an obvious commission cut or this statement:

''With that overriding objective, we wanted to produce a solution that:- would not change most contributors' total compensation (except for the better)- adjusts the model to better reward contributors of premium content"

Either the person who wrote that is incredibly naive or they're hoping that everyone who reads it is.

I'm guessing this will change over 95% of contributors commissions for the worse, and that not one single "premium content" contributor will be better rewarded.

For me it's basically a drop from 40% as a silver exclusive to 25% or 30% with luck at the end of this year. I might cancel my exclusivity soon and go back with Shutterstock and Dreamstime. It will take myself around 3 hours to resubmit at SS and 20 minutes to reactivate all my files at Dreamstime... sigh

You get 40% as a silver exclusive. i thought you are just getting 30% as a silver exclusive.

It's what I calculated from the % sheet, I might be wrong I'm confused. I get 0.76$ out of a 1.56$ credit... that would even be 50%. All I know is I get 0.76$ for my lowest

Silver exclusives get 30%.

The credit's are $1.53 each. An exclusive XS is 2 credits, or $3.06. You get $.92 which comes out to 30%.

I'm guessing this will change over 95% of contributors commissions for the worse, and that not one single "premium content" contributor will be better rewarded.

It's worse than that. If there are only about 50 contributors who achieve the 30K sales per year needed to stay at 40% then they represent only 0.16% of the 30,0000 contributors. Therefore 99.84% of us will lose out.

I smell an IPO or possibly a "Pretty Woman" sell off coming... lots of partners have been gathered into the fold.

I googled it and can't find what a "Pretty Woman" sell off is.

It probably means istock is being dressed up. Meaning do whatever it takes to increase financial performance and make istock look attractive to potential buyers, regardless of consequences.

It wouldn't matter if contributor relationships are permanently damaged. As long as it looks good when it sells is all that counts. If it blows up afterwards it doesn't matter. The sale is already completed. Kind of the same thing with selling a car that has problems. Clean and wax it, do your best to hide the problems, sell it at top dollar, and let the buyer deal with the problems that are sure to come up shortly after the sale.

jbarber873

MANY iStock exclusives are going to drop their exclusive status and flood other sites with images that use to only be available on iStock.

That was the first thing that crossed my mind. Imagine Sjlocke flooding SS and DT. Istock was such a great place to keep them locked up while we regulars had some nice sales at SS.

I totally agree with you. The only thing we can hope for is that the exclusives are given a bone- a slightly less onerous change that they can call a win. As others have said, this has happened before.On the other hand, it's perfect timing for stockfresh. If they can take advantage of it.

I smell an IPO or possibly a "Pretty Woman" sell off coming... lots of partners have been gathered into the fold.

I googled it and can't find what a "Pretty Woman" sell off is.

Sorry Lisa. The movie "Pretty Woman" was about a tycoon (Richard Gere) who bought up companies in an appearance to make it look like he was trying to help them survive when in reality he would break them up and sell them off for huge profits.

I don't know how many phone lines IS customer support has but if only 1000 contributors would take turns calling 24/7 it will have an impact on sales or at least customer support performance for existing/future buyers. It hast to hurt so they would start to listen to us.

Making a category for a 45% royalty rate for non-existent contributors is just illusionary - what.

What happened today it is not a minor change. It's a turning point. Never thougth I would consider the idea of leaving exclusivity. Too early to say, it's difficult, but maybe there's is some backpedaling. For the moment, I'll wait. For becoming independent; it would help being offered by other sites the possibility of swallowing all my portfolio at once.

I don't know how many phone lines IS customer support has but if only 1000 contributors would take turns calling 24/7 it will have an impact on sales or at least customer support performance for existing/future buyers. It hast to hurt so they would start to listen to us.

Making a category for a 45% royalty rate for non-existent contributors is just illusionary - what the *.

We need some leverage to make IS listen that this is bullcrap.

How dare they treat us like this?

Sorry for double post.

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lisafx

Sorry Lisa. The movie "Pretty Woman" was about a tycoon (Richard Gere) who bought up companies in an appearance to make it look like he was trying to help them survive when in reality he would break them up and sell them off for huge profits.

Oh, I see. Yes, that or an IPO does sound like exactly what's going on here.

Thanks for explaining John. I have seen PW a couple of times but for some reason Richard Gere made more of an impression than what his character did for a living

jbarber873

I smell an IPO or possibly a "Pretty Woman" sell off coming... lots of partners have been gathered into the fold.

I googled it and can't find what a "Pretty Woman" sell off is.

It probably means istock is being dressed up. Meaning do whatever it takes to increase financial performance and make istock look attractive to potential buyers, regardless of consequences.

It wouldn't matter if contributor relationships are permanently damaged. As long as it looks good when it sells is all that counts. If it blows up afterwards it doesn't matter. The sale is already completed. Kind of the same thing with selling a car that has problems. Clean and wax it, do your best to hide the problems, sell it at top dollar, and let the buyer deal with the problems that are sure to come up shortly after the sale.

exactly! If it's an IPO, the present owners get taken out and the new suckers- I mean shareholders -will have to deal with the mess. As they say "past performance is no guarantee of future results"